Happy Thursday!  ~  323

I have a story for you today that has nothing to do with the above image.  Well it sort of does but it will be hard to connect the dots without an explanation.

Tuesday I had lunch with my good friend Steve at one of the local restaurants in Maquoketa.  We still had 15 minutes left on our lunch break so I took the long way back and went past the duck pond.  If you’ve followed this blog for any period of time you know there are several mounds surrounded by water at the duck pond to protect the eggs and young wildlife from  predictors.

On one of the mounds a pair of Canadian Geese have built a nest and the female goose has sat on the nest for a several days.   When we went by the pond the two (much larger) swans were busily building a nest very close to the goose nest and in fact they had stolen material from that nest to build their own.  Two eggs were strewn about the area and the two geese were standing off to the side looking at the swans in bewilderment.

This was an image I had to capture so I headed back to the office to grab my camera.  I got detained with a couple of issues that I had to take care of first and by the time I got back to the pond it was about 30 minutes later.  The swans were gone, the geese had put some of their nest back together and the female was back on the nest.  The problem was the  eggs were still laying on the ground and not in the nest.

Yesterday on my lunch break I went by the pond hoping to find some images, I saw the lone female goose was again on the nest and I couldn’t see any eggs.    It was cold (38 degrees), cloudy, and there wasn’t anything going on at the duck pond so I grabbed a sandwich and went to a place that I have seen a lot of smaller bird activity, called Horseshoe Pond.

I had positioned my car so I had a good shooting angle at the pond and could capture some of the area where there was a lot of bird activity.  After a few minutes a beautiful male cardinal and then shortly there after a female cardinal showed up and were pecking at the ground.  They were getting close to my camera when another vehicle pulled up and a guy with two overweight terriers got out.

Of course the two dogs tore out after the cardinals and when they flew away they came over to my car and started yapping at me.  And that is the reason why I’m showing you the windmill.  🙂

Thanks for stopping by the blog.  Enjoy your day and be careful.